Night

It is night - by the time they have eaten and Judas has left to do his deeds - it is night. Betrayal - night. Fear and arrest - night. Night, night, night.

The word, the Incarnation, is ready to leave His mortal frame. The time is upon us.

It is hard to know how much any of the players in the story understood their places in advance of events - even Jesus. Did Judas leave with a heavy heart - did he slink out of the room or did he leave boldly - not yet caring where his treachery would leave his friends?

Judas is a tragic figure because Judas of all those we meet in the Gospels never saw the truth of the resurrection - Judas' life ended in the night. This is a tragedy of his choice - at least in our theology but it is the tragedy all too often of the human condition - that people simply live without any real hope and die before anyone gives them any.

This hope is, of course, the hope of the Good News of Jesus Christ, but also the more mundane hope of a decent level of living, or even a sustainable life on this planet. The Gospel is not just about the hope of words but the reality of a life which is given a chance - the reality of a life which is valued equally with all other human lives.

Judas did have this chance and he made a choice to walk away from Jesus - we all have this choice - to stay of to go. But there are some for whom there is never the choice to stay, and in this week where we contemplate that which holds us away from God we might do well to consider those in our world for whom a night-time existance is a reality from which they find little chance of escape.

What difference am I going to make?

We do understand our choices in that we can see the devastating consequences of human greed all around us. Judas was accused of being a thief - we may not even realize it - but when we insist on taking what we think we are entitled to in life without any thought for the bottom line producer and how our bargain mentality affects their reality - then we may be stealing into the night - pray that we may struggle and return to Christ's side and not fall prey to the darkness.